1.6 In-Progress Set #1 - 11/8/11 - Warrior tanks rejoice!

PTS NOTES:
* Riftstalker: Annihilate: Reverted functionality changes back to the 1.5 version [A finisher that deals damage and increases Attack Power by 15%].
* Riftstalker: Guarded Steel: Reverted functionality changes back to the 1.5 version [A finisher that deals damage and increases Armor Value by 30%]. The duration of the Armor buff now lasts 30 seconds instead of being increased by using more Combo Points.
* Justicar: Thorvin's Law: Now properly states the scaling damage reduction based on points in Justicar in the ability tooltip.
* Justicar: Mien of Leadership: No longer causes Mien of Leadership or Mien of Honor to cancel on nearby targets.
* Reaver: Fixed a bug allowing Binding of Affliction to enhance damage done by Spotter's Order.
* Reaver: Binding of Death: Increased damage mitigation per application to 4%.
* Void Knight *– Devourer has been reduced slightly. Now it increases mitigation on Void by 1-5%
* Void Knight: Fixed Tempest still draining Pacts.
* Planar Attunement: Mage: Flaring Glyph now increases Spell Power by 120.
* Planar Attunement: Mage: Razor Edge now increases one-handed weapon DPS by 3.
* Planar Attunement: Mage: Keen Edge now increases two-handed weapon DPS by 6.

GENERAL
* Added a checkbox to merchants who have items filtered from your view that will allow you to See All Items.
* 'Nimble' mounts - +90% speed - now require level 30 rather than level 40 to use.
* You may now remain mounted while inside Lantern Hook and the Chancel of Labors.
* The Inventory search feature can now search by the terms 'Soulbound' and 'Bind-On-Equip' to help find these items in your inventory.
* All Artifacts now stack to 99. Which is a lot.
* Characters who are /afk will be notified if they auto-fail any party or raid leader-issued ready checks.
* Added an 'Already Purchased' indicator (if applicable) to the tooltip of Ascended Power abilities on merchants.

RIFTS AND INVASIONS
* Rift consumable items now stack to 50, increased from 20.
* The [Zone] Defender Achievements now have more general description text as the Rifts required now regularly show up in all zones.
* PvP Rifts: When you are carrying the Sourcestone, we now show a target arrow on the ground pointing you toward where you should go with it.
* Increased the frequency at which Invasions spawn during high level zone events.
* Added more daily quests to all zones for closing Rifts and defeating Rift creatures.

LOOKING FOR GROUP
* Players manually added to in-progress LFG groups can now use the 'Enter Dungeon' button on their LFG map icon.
* Some forms of NPC mind control effects that would remove you from the LFG queue no longer do so.
* You can now use the raid frame UI to initiate a LFG member votekick.

PLANAR ATTUNEMENT
* The second tier of Planar Attunement is now unlocked! The window now allows you to preview abilities in tiers you cannot access yet.
* Players will receive more Planar Attunement experience when killing NPCs in Sliver and Raid zones.
* Significantly increased the amount of experience granted for Raid and Sliver bosses.
* Significantly increased the amount of Planar Attunement experience awarded from random Tier 1 and Tier 2 Expert Dungeon completions via LFG.

SOULS

CLERIC

CABALIST
* Undertow: Now properly triggers on the correct target of Maelstrom (assuming it's an enemy, of course).

DRUID
* Satyr: Now properly inherits the Cleric's Focus, allowing Thorns of Asphodel to do proper damage in raids.
* Spirit of the Wood: Now properly works as described, and no longer affects the pet's auto-attacks.

INQUISITOR
* Clinging Spirit: Can also be applied by Bolt of Depravity. Now properly lists its duration as 15 seconds.
* Nysyr's Rebuke: No longer suffers from pushback.

JUSTICAR
* Increased threat generated by all damaging abilities.
* Bolt of Radiance: Now properly categorized as a Damage ability and not Threat in the ability binder.
* Precept of Refuge: This ability may now critically hit.
* Reparation: Now properly matches the ability description, no longer healing other Clerics with Reparation.
* Righteous Mandate, Doctrine of Righteousness: Properly flagged as a single-target spell, rather than an Area of Effect spell.
* Rebuke: No longer interrupts un-interruptible boss abilities.
* Mien of Leadership: Increased threat bonus to 500%. Now also causes overhealing to generate threat.
* Thorvin's Law: Now causes Mien of Leadership to reduce damage from spells by 3-6%, and all non-Physical damage by 1% + 1% per point spent in Justicar above 26. No longer requires the purchase of Precept of Refuge to unlock.
* Shield of Faith: Now reduces all damage by 2-10%.
* Hammerknell Synergy Crystal 4-piece Bonus: Reduced the absorption triggered by Doctrine of Authority to 50% of the Justicar's Spell Power.

SENTINEL
* Serendipity: Now properly applies to the next spell cast immediately after proccing.

MAGE
* Fixed a bug where Charge consuming abilities which block Charge generation while active could also block Mana returned from drinks.

ARCHON
* Power In Numbers: Will no longer affect damage done by Illuminate.

CHLOROMANCER
* Raised in Nature: Now uses only the mage's base Intelligence and the Intelligence added by equipment to determine the amount of Endurance bonus granted.
* Updated ability descriptions on Lifegiving Veil, Lifebound Veil, and Synthesis.

DOMINATOR
* Quick Thinking: Fixed a bug where Quick Thinking would not be consumed by casting Icicle if both Quick Thinking and Storm Shard occurred at the same time.
* Haunting Pain: Increased damage. Now deals damage every 1 second, down from 2. Fixed an issue where the damage was not dealt as expected when used with less than 10 stacks. Updated mana cost.
* Thunder Blast: Now interrupts the target when the ability is cast instead of at the time damage is dealt. Fixed an issue where switching targets just after the ability was cast would cause the new target to get knocked back rather than the spell's target.

ELEMENTALIST
* Velocity: The debuff now increases the mage's Elemental pet damage against that target by 15-75%. Updated the description to more clearly indicate it only affects ability damage.
* Crystalline Missiles: Increased damage.
* Air Elemental: Reduced damage of the Air Elemental's Lightning Bolt and Ball Lightning abilities.
* Elemental Fury: Now increases the pet owner's Spell Power by 20 points for every point spent in Elementalist above 40. Fixed an issue preventing it from being purged.
* Planar Expansion: Now increases Elemental pet's damage by 3% (increased from 2%) for each point spent in Elementalist above 31, in addition to the existing effects.
* Burning Fury: Fixed an issue where this would proc off of auto-attacks; it now procs only off of damaging spells. Burning Fury buffs are also removed properly when the character dies.

NECROMANCER
* Plague Bolt: Increased damage.
* The Shadow Revenant ability, Oblivion, now requires only the initial target to have Necrosis in order to trigger the Area of Effect damage and additional effects of Oblivion.

PYROMANCER
* Heat Wave: No longer resets the cooldown of Intensify Elements.
* Glyphs of Power: Now increases spell damage by 5%, at the expense of the Pyromancer taking 5% more damage.
* Improved Glyphs of Power: Decreases the additional damage you take while affected by Glyphs of Power by 1-5%. Increases the additional damage you deal under Glyphs of Power by 1-5%.
* Fulminate: Now requires 110 Charge to cast.
* Combust: Slightly increased damage. Now correctly enhanced by all abilities and buffs.
* Improved Flame Bolt: Updated the buff icon tooltip to correctly indicate that it affects all spell damage.
* Fire Armor: Improved Mage Armor from Warlock now correctly applies to Pyromancer's Fire Armor.
* Smoldering Power: Fixed an issue where this would be non-castable during combat.
* Pyromancer's Armor: Updated description to indicate that this cannot occur more than once every 10 seconds - the ability worked this way previously, but now the spell description matches.
* Withering Flames: Increased damage.

STORMCALLER
* Storm Shard: Now only procs on damaging Air spells. Reduced critical hit damage bonus provided by Storm Shard from 100% to 75%. Fixed an issue where this ability could occasionally cause 2 Icicles to be instant-cast. Procs should no longer display 2 icons. The buff should also properly disappear on death.
* Lightning Conductor: Fixed an issue where this wasn't providing its damage increase for the full duration of Hypothermia.
* Forked Lightning: Reduced damage.
* Hypothermia: Multiple mages can now have the Hypothermia debuff on the same target at once. This applies only to the debuff and doesn't impact the snare portion of the effect.

WARLOCK
* Void Decimation: Now increases the mage's Void Bolt damage by 0.75% for each of the mage's Death-type damage over time spells affecting the target. This bonus damage increases by an additional 0.75% for each point spent above 40 in Warlock.
* Dark Armor: Fixed a bug where rank 1 was not dealing damage.

NIGHTBLADE
* Blackout: Functionality changed. Now a passive ability that increases the number of times Scourge of Darkness triggers by 3, and the damage of Death-based attacks by 6%. For every point spent in Nightblade above 44, the number of Scourge of Darkness triggers increases by 1 and the Death-based attack damage increases by 2%.
* Twilight Shelter: Now reduces outgoing damage by 40% and additional copies apply their 40% reduction on the recalculated amount [ex: 100% original outgoing damage reduced to 60% by the first effect of Twilight Shelter, then to 36% of the original outgoing damage by the second]. Duration of the buff reduced to 5 seconds from 8.
* Fire and Death Attunement: Now increases damage dealt by 2-6%, up from 1-3%, and decreases damage taken from Fire and Death based attacks by 2-6%, down from 5-15%.
* Scourge of Darkness: Fixed a bug where additional triggers from Blackout and Synergy Crystal effects were not benefiting from the 30% damage bonus of Heat Retention.

RANGER
* Quick Shot: Fixed a bug with the first tick of Quick Shot so that it no longer triggers poisons, weapon enchantments, or Munitions effects.
* Hammerknell Synergy Crystal 2-piece bonus: Splinter Shot and Shadow Fire can now be cast instantly.

RIFTSTALKER
* Rift Guard: Absorption shield is now triggered whenever you use Guarded Steel or a Plane Shift ability.
* Stalker Phase: Now unlocked at 18 points, up from 16.
* Guardian Phase: Now unlocked at 16 points, down from 18. Increases all Resistances by 30, reduced from 50.
* Improved Rift Guard: The bonus applied to Rift Guard now only occurs when you are in Guardian Phase. If not in Guardian Phase, you will only get the benefit from the regular Rift Guard. Switching out of Guardian Phase after getting the Improved Rift Guard effect will cause the effect to be removed.
* Improved Guardian Phase: Now also reduces damage taken from non-Physical attacks by 5% when Guardian Phase is active.
* Improved Guarded Steel: Functionality changed. Now increases your Deflect chance by 10-20% and increases threat generation by 20-40% while Guarded Steel is active.
* Twilight Shelter: Duration of the buff reduced from 8 seconds to 5 seconds. When combined with Twilight Transcendence, the outgoing damage reduction is recalculated before the second reduction is applied, from 100% to 60% with Twilight Shelter, and from 60% to 36% with both Twilight Shelter and Twilight Transcendence active.
* Twilight Transcendence: The amount of healing done is now computed from the Rogue's base maximum health instead of their current maximum health.
* Hammerknell Synergy Crystal 2-piece Bonus: Now reduces damage taken from non-Physical attacks by 15% when you deflect.

WARRIOR
* 'Gift' abilities now reduce incoming Physical damage by 0.3% and non-Physical damage by 0.38% per Soul Point spent in the associated Soul Tree. Ultimately this grants a 20% Physical mitigation and 25% non-Physical mitigation bonus to characters who have all of their points spent in tank souls.
* Several tank abilities have had their threat generation amounts increased.
* Rebalanced Power costs of non-Finisher abilities to resolve the issues caused by the Surging Energy fix. This change affects all Warrior Souls.

CHAMPION
* Lingering Wounds: This and related abilities should now proc correctly in duels.

REAVER
* Rift Summon: Once again teleports the target.
* Wasting Away: Ability changed - now increases damage of Area of Effect and Damage Over Time abilities by 3-10%. The previous effect has been moved to Binding of Death.
* Binding of Death: Ability changed - Now causes Soul Sickness, Necrotic Wounds, and Blood Fever on the target to reduce all damage types dealt to the Reaver. Continues to reduce Power cost of Area of Effect abilities.
* Flesh Rot: The damage reduction now only affects Physical attacks. Removed an errant debuff icon that this ability would place on the caster.
* Crest Mastery: Now gives 2% non-Physical resistance instead of 3%, and no longer scales with points spent in Reaver.
* Imbued Armor: Now affects all damage types. Damage mitigation percentage scales from 0.5-3%.
* Shroud of Entropy: No longer requires Attack Points.
* Blood Fever: Can now trigger Void Knight's Blood from a Stone ability.
* Cyclone Strike: Cooldown reduced to 5 seconds, range increased to 10 meters, threat generation reduced accordingly.
* Power From the Masses: Reduced damage mitigation to 0.7% per application.

VOID KNIGHT
* Void: Rebalanced to support the new 'Gift' ability enhancements. Still reduces Physical and Magical damage.
* Devourer: Rebalanced to support the new 'Gift' ability enhancements. Still reduces Physical and Magical damage.
* Accord of Emptiness: Now grants a Pact every 3 seconds. No longer grants damage mitigation to support the new 'Gift' ability enhancements. Now also has a 50% chance to refresh the cooldown on Rift Summon when the Void Knight is struck by a damaging spell.
* Singularity: No longer requires Attack Points. Fixed a tooltip error where it listed only non-Physical damage reduction. Singularity reduces all damage and the tooltip now reflects this.
* Rift Shield: Now absorbs all non-Physical damage instead of just Magical damage.
* Ravenous Defense: No longer scales with points spent in Void Knight, and has been rebalanced to support the new 'Gift' ability enhancements.
* Ravenous Strength: Removed an erroneous number '5' on the tooltip.
* Catalyze, Power Sink: No longer proc 'Instability' on the target; the 5% damage reduction this gave the Void Knight is now part of the new 'Gift' ability enhancements.
* Surge: Now gives even more Threat enhancement.
* Tempest: Cooldown reduced to 5 seconds, range increased to 10 meters, threat generation reduced accordingly.

DUNGEONS, SLIVERS, AND RAIDS
* Knockback abilities used by NPCs in Dungeons and Raids no longer re-orient your camera.

DARKENING DEEPS
* Scarn: Moved the in-combat barrier slightly further into Scarn's chamber to prevent him from getting stuck on take-off.
* Master: Scarn: Fires now immediately extinguish when the encounter is reset.

DROWNED HALLS [Sliver]
* Fixed an issue making it impossible to complete the Wave Goodbye achievement.
* Slightly increased the radius of the Hydrostatic Shock protection bubble so players gain its buff a bit faster on entering the bubble.

HAMMERKNELL [Raid]
* Player pets are now potential targets for the Bloodplague Crawler stacking damage buff.
* Soulrender Zilas' minions no longer award experience when killed.
* The 'Death's Hand' debuff cast by Runeburst Umbrals is now removed from characters leaving the instance.
* Achievement: Wait, What: Fixed a bug with this achievement!

RIVER OF SOULS [Raid]
* Herald Gaurath: It should no longer be possible to force Gaurath's Icon of the Herald to spawn outside of the raid zone.

PvP & WARFRONTS
* The Codex: Fixed a case where Defiant characters could sneak into the Guardian spawn area.
* Library of the Runemasters now has associated Achievements!
* Guardian's Flare and Defiant's Flare Planar Abilities can no longer be used on the core area-hub Wardstones. [Only affects PvP shards, as this has never been usable on hub Wardstones on PvE shards.]

CHRONICLES
* You can now enter a Chronicle in a group that has been converted to a Raid, as long as the total size of the raid meets the player cap for the Chronicle.

ZONES

DROUGHTLANDS
* Ant Farm: Entering a Warfront while you've been polymorphed into an ant will now remove the effect.
* Thwarting the Emberlord: Quest should be soloable once again!

GLOAMWOOD
* A new Butchering trainer has taken up residence in Gloamwood Pines. Dan Lewis can be found near Dursk Nightclaw.

IRON PINE PEAKS
* Frozen Gauntlet: Fixed a case where players in a group could fail the quest after completing the objectives.
* The quests 'In Over His Head' and 'Dark Heart' should no longer be blocked by nearby Rifts.
* Logging out in the Forge area of the Chancel of Labors should no longer cause you to be magically teleported to the Guardian or Defiant camps when you log back in.

SCARLET GORGE
* Moved the Deranged Cadaver out of some rocks that would occasionally hide it.

SCARWOOD REACH
* Rift: Neverending Labyrinth: Fixed an issue where the player who gains first aggro on the boss was unable to ever lose aggro from it.

SHIMMERSAND
* Cleansing of Firesand: Updated the quest objectives so this daily quest should make more sense now!
* Quests involving Rifts in the Dunes of Akala now provide the Rift Lure for the required Rift.

STONEFIELD
* Revised the flow of the final few Stonefield quests so that players don't get tricked into heading straight into Scarwood Reach and skipping past Scarlet Gorge.

ITEMS
* Added a wider range of weapons to the Epic Planar Goods vendors.
* Manastones have been fixed so they correctly apply their bonus to your maximum mana.
* Improved the way we count how many items are currently equipped in an item set.
* Ancient Murdantix Spawn [Item]: The mount item is no longer Unique, meaning you can properly acquire and trade or sell additional 'Murdantii' after you've collected one yourself.
* Blighted Champion Crystal: The set bonuses on this crystal were accidentally set to the wrong order - the 2 piece bonus is now the 4 piece bonus, and vice versa.
* Dusty Treasure Hunter's Satchel can no longer be sold on the Auction House.
* Nyx's Archon Crystal: Fixed a bug where the buff would not be removed when the Crystal was unequipped. Also fixed Elemental pets triggering the 2-piece bonus effect. Description has been updatede to help clarify that only Undead pets trigger the effect.
* Nyx's Pyromancer Crystal: The 2-piece set bonus now increases the chance for Fireball to leave a Combust DoT effect on the target by 10%, and increases the damage done by the Combust DoT by 40%. The 4-piece bonus causes Heat Wave to increase Fire damage by 20% while active, increases the duration of Heat Wave by 5 seconds, and reduces the cooldown by 15 seconds.
* Sanctum's Word: Now with Spell Power.
* Shadepiercer Bow: Updated icon and equipped renderable.
* Voucher: Crystal Sourcestone will now give Inscribed Sourcestones rather than Crystal Sourcestones (which are no longer used).

CRAFTING
* Clarified the description of the Apprentice/Journeyman/Dedicated/Artisan/Supreme Harvester Achievements to specify that only Mining and Foraging count for 'harvesting'.
* The recipe for Polished Shadethorn Lumber now properly uses Sagebrush Timber instead of Sagebrush Lumber.
* You can now mine Earth Elemental, Oreling, and Golem corpses.
* You can now forage Treant and Bogling corpses.
* Thwarting Runes will no longer display as 'Thwarting Cipher' when applied to an item.
* Heroic Healing Tonics and Bright Surge Vials no longer share the same icon.
* Recipe: Sacred Fetish now requires 280 skill to learn, which matches the skill required to craft it.
* Light Magenta Dye is now crafted at a level that gives skillups at the point you are able to learn the recipe.

ART AND AUDIO
* Improved and optimized some surfaces for players using the low-quality renderer mode for better visuals!
* Improved reflections added to many kinds of water in the game (for high-graphics settings), and improved the coloring when looking down into the water, especially in shallow areas.
* Sanctum outdoor music now plays more often.
* General area music should kick back in more reliably after exiting combat.
* Fixed the Spindrel mount's footstep audio not playing correctly.
* More swimming camera work - can now swim up easier when the camera is at the sea floor level, smarter character-hiding logic when the camera gets very close to your character, and now treats the top of the water like ground and will pitch appropriately.

MACROS AND COMMANDS
* Changed setting window text for "Show Only my Buffs" to refer to party members instead of "on the target", as it was described incorrectly.

UI/SETTINGS
* Porticulum locations now appear on the world map once discovered.
* Fixed the scrolling reset to the top of the list in the Guild UI whenever the data is refreshed.
* Trying to link items in a Raid Warning no longer displays box characters.
* Fixed a case where the Healer role icon on a group member's portrait would disappear after rearranging the group order.
* RiftConnect: Sending and receiving Twitter messages including the '=' character works properly again!
* The 'Daily Limit' number shown on the quest log should now properly update each time a repeatable quest is turned in.
* Fixed a rare case where an incorrect tooltip would show up on Role icons.
* Characters level 6 and below who have not spent their Soul Points will have a reminder pop-up of the Soul Tree UI once per play session while out of combat. Those points are important, use 'em!
* Added a bunch of new loading screen tips to highlight new features!
* Fixed Party and Pet raid frame locations being labeled backwards in the Edit Layout mode.
* Quest tracker should be less likely to overlap other quests on your screen.

A lot of those warrior tank changes are not all that great. WL is losing it's value, VK is still strong, some slight nerfs to low point Pally and 1/2/Reaver just replaces 1/2/WL.

Pretty terrible overall. Lots of threads on the Rift forums.

I don't recall exact numbers off the top of my head but it's like PM75/MM28/B67 on a 51VK right now. With 1.6 you have a lot of gimmick skills and 44pt/WA hybrids. More or less same mitigation in hybrids.

It looks to me like they have brought back hybrids..Seems to be universally agree'd they have made a lot of hybrid builds viable and wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more options then we had before

I'm pretty sure the idea is to nerf the unique passives in each tree and to buff the common passives, ie 'Gifts'. That way each spec will be closer to one another in terms of passive mitigation and the difference made up in playstyle and functionality.

Also lol at increasing Mage weapon dps....UNLESS THEY'RE GIVING US A MELEE SOUL AND THIS IS PREPARATION!!!1111!!!11!!1!1!

Eh, I don't know though. Guess it is a bit of a mixed bag really. Or at least depends on how much ire you held for 51VK. But I really enjoyed VK since Beta 5(?) when Discharge hit for like 1k total. :P

Anyway, yea. Guess it's not a bad idea to move some the base mitigation to the Gifts, but think it was kinda lazy rather than just fixing a lot of poor talents in mid-upper tier of PL, WL, RV vis-a-vis VK. Which was the real problem at least as far viability was concerned.

1min CD @ 44pt? Ehhh.

Also it wasn't like we were severely limited by AP before. Not like I was using Devouring Blow every 3AP. WTH. >.>

---------- Post added 2011-11-08 at 06:18 PM ----------

The experience point boost to raid kills is like a godsend though. Glad they listened to feedback on that from raiders.